Schonhardt-Bailey's FROM THE CORN
LAWS TO FREE TRADE
ONE CASE TO RULE THEM ALL:
THEORETICAL SYNTHESIS AND
THE REPEAL OF THE CORN LAWS
Robert Pahre
A review essay on Cheryl Schonhardt-Bailey's From the Corn Laws to Free
Trade: Interests, Ideas, and Institutions in Historical Perspective. Cambridge:
MIT Press, 2006. 440 p. ISBN 9780262195430.
The repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846 provides one of the classic stories of
political economy, found in several mythical tellings. In one, the rising middle
class, strengthened by the political reforms of 1832, finally vanquished the
aristocracy and ushered in modern Britain. In another, Repeal was the
triumph of the classical political economists, the moment at which British
politicians were convinced of the virtues of free trade. In yet another,
Prime Minister Robert Peel bravely sacrificed his political career and his
political party in the interests of ... either free trade or Ireland. Or, perhaps,
repeal of the ,Corn Laws simply reflected British hegemony, whose global
interests would best be served by importing raw materials and exporting
manufactures.
Political scientists and economists have taken these historical narratives
for various purposes of their own. In some cases, they use modern
economics and sophisticated methods to produce explanations that do not
A Research Annual
Research in the History of Economic Thought and Methodology, Volume 27-A, 277-290
Copyright © 2009 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited
All rights of reproduction in any form reserved
ISSN: 0743-4154jdoi:l0.1108jS0743-4154(2009)00027A016
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differ all that much from one of the earlier stories. In others, they engage
in polemics against one explanation in support of another. Still others
attempt a synthesis of the various explanations. Some treat Repeal as a
unique event, while other political economists see it as one case among
many.
In From the Corn Laws to free trade, Cheryl Schonhardt-Bailey gives us a
synthetic theoretical account of a unique historical event. She draws from
each of the narratives earlier except the tale of British hegemony. She weighs
the relative explanatory power of each story and draws them together
into an account in which each is given a role, contingent on the others.
Impressive data sets on voting behavior, aristocratic asset portfolios, the
content of parliamentary debates, and the coverage of provincial news­
papers provide strong support for the account.
Analytically, this synthesis makes use of the language of supply and
demand in political markets, focusing on those social interests that
demanded free trade and the politicians that supplied it. She structures
these factors in terms of social interests, the institutions in which these
interests interact, and the ideas that affect their interaction. In this, she
joins a growing consensus among political economists that interests, ideas,
and institutions provide central variables in any theory of political economy
(compare, e.g., the title of Helen Milner's (1997) Interests, institutions, and
information; see also Blyth, 2003).
Throughout, Schonhardt-Bailey treats Repeal as a historically unique
event. Thus, while she draws from many theories, the particular synthesis of
theories that she develops is unique to this case. This strategy constrains her
to explain her case, even if it is anomalous, while allowing her substantial
freedom in choosing which theories to include.
This research strategy raises significant questions about the project from
a social-scientific standpoint: is a case-specific synthesis of generalizable
theories an improvement on case-specific historiographies? Without a strong
a priori theory, the observer has too many degrees of freedom. As a result,
this kind of ad hoc synthesis risks being little different from ex post line­
fitting in a statistical regression, in which the analyst adds and subtracts
variables without reference to underlying theoretical principles.
To be more than redescription, Schonhardt-Bailey's content analyses and
statistical regressions need a strong theory on which to rest. Unfortunately,
a historically unique synthesis probably cannot provide a sufficiently strong
theoretical foundation. Instead, such a synthesis constitutes a de novo
theory that, by its very novelty, does not quite generalize and in fact loses
some of the theoretical power of the generalizable theories from which it
One Case to Rule Them All
279
draws. As a result, it cannot appeal to the power of covering-law explana­
tions to strengthen its causal plausibility.
Moreover, a multidisciplinary synthesis such as From the Corn Laws to
free trade faces the formidable challenge of addressing three different
disciplinary audiences: economics, history, and political science. To make a
credible claim of scientific advance, it needs to persuade all three audiences
that it represents an advance over existing explanations of Repeal. Without
unanimity, a multidisciplinary synthesis can be judged only in terms of a
popularity contest. Down the path of such popularity contests lies a form of
ontological relativism that Schonhardt-Bailey andaIl three of her audiences
would surely reject.
Whatever one's position on these epistemological issues, Schonhardt­
Bailey's From the Corn Laws to free trade represents, on its own tenus, a
definitive political account of the Repeal. In many ways, it provides a strong
exemplar for the field of historical political economy and a model for
graduate students on how to conduct rigorous research into historical topics.
These achievements make the book all the more important as an example
of the limitations of the kind of empiricism underlying the project. If, as
I maintain, this successful and important book raises serious methodological
and epistemological questions, these call into question the majority of modern
work in the field of political economy. These methodological and epistemo­
logical issues also highlight serious problems with any project based on a
strategy of theoretical synthesis, even one as exemplary as this book.
OVERVIEW OF THE PROJECT
Schonhardt-Bailey's goal is to explain the repeal of the Corn Laws. This
case is of obvious substantive importance. Schonhardt-Bailey also identifies
a good historical puzzle in the details of trying to explain legislative voting
behavior on Repeal. First, politicians seemed to act against their personal
economic and political interests when voting for it. Second, they also acted
in a puzzling way when justifying their own behavior. Specifically,
Schonhardt-Bailey shows that the politicians voted as delegates of their
constituents. Intriguingly, these same politicians justified their votes in terms
of a trustee theory of representation in which they acted on behalf of the
nation in accordance with their personal best judgment. These votes, though
not the justifications, would seem to violate the mandates on which many
had been elected, since most had personal mandates and were not sent to the
Commons as delegates.
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ROBERT PAHRE
In both Schonhardt-Bailey's book and the wider literature, economic
interests provide the basic force behind repeal. Manufacturers, particularly
those in cotton textiles, had a clear interest in free trade. The aristocracy's
objections to Repeal weakened as many began to diversify their portfolios
to include stock holdings in railroads and other companies associated with
trade. With the pro-Repeal groups growing in strength as opposing interests
declined, Repeal was nearly inevitable.
The timing of Britain's move to free trade depended on political factors,
however. Schonhardt-Bailey, like many others, emphasizes the role of
political organization in making latent economic interests into politically
effective forces. On the familiar account, free trade groups such as
manufacturers, the middle classes, and the labor aristocracy may have been
gaining in economic strength, but their political power remained limited by
older institutions. The Reform Act of 1832 began to unleash this potential
political power and led to demands for further democratic reform.
The strategies of the particular groups thus released also helped shape the
outcome. In the 1830s and 1840s, with the growing national interests in free
trade, the Anti-Corn Law League mobilized by "nationalizing the interest."
In other words, the League fought for its own interest by casting it in terms
that would appeal to a wider national interest - in this case, appealing to the
general public for Repeal as part of a general move to democratic political
reform. The League also appealed to economic liberalism and to some
princi pIes of Christian morality.
The combination of economic and political demands in Britain could
have snowballed into revolution, as similar demands did in France in 1848.
Explaining the British outcome rests most importantly on the political
response of the anti-Repeal groups, especially the faction of the
Conservative Party that ultimately voted with Robert Peel on the final
division over Repeal. On this reading, Repeal of the Corn Laws is a decision
to make economic concessions to hold off more damaging political reforms­
at least until the reform acts of 1867,1884, and 1885 and the Parliament Act
of 1911.
The decision of the aristocracy to make economic sacrifices for the sake
of holding on to political power hinges, in part, on ideas. Schonhardt-Bailey
emphasizes two classes of beliefs. The first set consists of political economists'
ideas about free trade and its effect on wages, rents, and other economic
variables. The second set encompasses political beliefs about whether
members of parliament should act as delegates of their constituencies or
trustees of the nation. In the end, Peelites voted their constituents' economic
interests but justified this in terms of the political interests of the nation.
281
As this brief summary should make clear, Schonhardt-Bailey has a
nuanced overall account of Repeal. Like many others, she claims to bridge
two approaches common in political science, rational-choice, and historical­
institutionalism. As this book and others show, these approaches go quite
well together (see Greif, 2006; Bates, Greif, Levi, Rosenthal, & Weingast,
1998; Shepsle, 1989); when synthesized, they also share much in common
with sophisticated versions of Marxist historical materialism (see North,
1984). Also like both Marxism and Northism, the ideological superstructure
plays an important role in politics, sitting atop both material interests
and the political institutions in which the struggles among classes and
groups work themselves out. Thanks to these elements, shared with various
other scholars, this book will likely appeal to a diverse interdisciplinary
community, though each community will see something different in it.
CONTRmUTIONS TO THE HISTORIOGRAPHY
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Recognizing these commonalities with existing approaches to historical
political economy leads us to the obvious question: "What has this book
told us that we did not already know?" (George Jones, a colleague at the
LSE, cited in Schonhardt-Bailey, 2006, p. 283). Schonhardt-Bailey's answer
to this question, developed throughout the conclusion, is disappointing.
Essentially, she reviews each of the several extant explanations of Repeal
and then argues that each one leaves out some variable included in the
others. Thus, theories of economic interest address the question of who
demanded free trade but leave out the supply-side question of which
politicians supplied Repeal and why. Historians rightly address the role of
ideas but, according to Schonhardt-Bailey, often neglect the interest-based
motives behind them.
In other words, Schonhardt-Bailey can reasonably claim to make a
contribution to each of a series of literatures. However, those contributions
generally come from other literatures. As a result, there are really three
claimed contributions, one for each literature, each filling a particular gap.
She fails to make a convincing argument that her account contributes
to the union of the sets of all literatures. Because three disciplines have
dominant theories of the same events that differ from one another, we
cannot say with confidence that adding missing variables to each discipline
actually moves any of them closer to being "more true." Indeed, figuring out
what claims are "more true" in a multidisciplinary setting raises thorny
questions in the philosophy of science that I will explore more fully in a later
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ROBERT PAHRE
section. In some cases, a particular claim to scientific advance is con­
tingent on the sequence of discovery in a given field, and therefore may
not represent an advance in other disciplines with a different sequence of
discovery.
Focusing narrowly on the historiography, Schonhardt-Bailey's more
interesting contribution is not a theoretical synthesis, but instead a heuristic
and a critique. Historians tend to develop particular themes, based of course
on their readings of particular sources in the archives. Though historians are
trained to be critical of the sources and the motives that politicians express,
they find it difficult to analyze critically the motives that their sources do not
express. As it turns out, Schonhardt-Bailey's empirical strategy is well-suited
to address both aspects of the historiography - to think critically about the
motives that historians identify and to evaluate the unsourced motives that
historians tend to overlook.
Taking the expressed motives first, consider how Schonhardt-Bailey
evaluates an important work such as Norman Gash's (1965) Reaction and
reconstruction in English politics, 1832-1852. Gash's story of Repeal
emphasizes the role of key leaders such as Peel in the Commons and Lord
John Russell and the Duke of Wellington in the Lords. For Gash, these
leaders' ability to persuade key groups ultimately led the Lords to accept
Repeal.
Schonhardt-Bailey's approach to such claims is to test them with data.
In this case, she chooses a content analysis of parliamentary debate using
a software program called ALCESTE. This program examines texts to see
which terms are associated with one another. For example, when people say
"Wellington" in a parliamentary debate, what else are they talking about?
The surprising answer is that the Lords tended not to refer to Russell or
Wellington much at all. From this, Schonhardt-Bailey infers that Russell's
and Wellington's arguments were not influential. This inference might well
be wrong, for individual Lords might have had decisive private conversa­
tions with Russell or Wellington without citing these leaders' arguments in
public. Still, given the importance that Wellington gave to support of Her
Majesty's Government, it is striking that ALCESTE does not commonly
find associations such as "Like, Wellington, I am compelled to support the
Queen and her government."
Schonhardt-Bailey also finds that Peel is not ignored in the way that
Russell and Wellington were. The Lords apparently took his arguments
quite seriously. linking Repeal to preservation of the territorial constitution.
The Lords also looked closely at Peel's claims about the economic
consequences of repeal for agricultural labor. wages, prices, rents, trade,
One Case to Rule Them All
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and Empire. Schonhardt-Bailey's finding that the debate in the Lords largely
ignored Russell's and Wellington's arguments in favor of assessing Peel's
claims is, to my knowledge, novel. This claim therefore represents a clear
contribution to the historiography.
The structure of this contribution also suggests an interesting heuristic
strategy for historians by using software to find patterns that they otherwise
might miss. Historians approach texts in a context-rich way, reading them
in sequence while giving great respect to the back-and-forth of a debate.
Schonhardt-Bailey's content analysis shakes up the puzzle pieces in the box
and looks for patterns that ignore the sequential aspects of context. Indeed,
this redescription of the data treats sequence as a form of noise and tries
to ignore it. When, as here, it obtains a result that seems both novel and
plausible, such content analysis proves its worth. An historian might use
such a pattern of associations to take a fresh look at the evidence. On this
reading, content-analysis software such as ALCESTE is not useful as
evidence but becomes very useful as heuristic, a guide to looking at familiar
evidence in a novel way.
A final observation on this contribution will become important as we
consider epistemological questions later on. This particular historiographi­
cal contribution depends on the sequence of discovery. Schonhardt-Bailey's
reinterpretation of the roles of Peel, Russell, and Wellington gains in
importance against the historiographical background, notably Norman
Gash's interpretation of how Repeal carried in the Lords. Because Nash
emphasized all three leaders, it is a contribution to find that the arguments
of only one seem important. Yet, if Nash had never existed, Schonhardt­
Bailey's finding would be less significant, a case-specific finding that a given
prime minister was rhetorically important. One might even infer that the
alleged importance of Peel's arguments was a statistical artifact and just as
unimportant as the other two.
The fact that the sequence of discovery affects the nature of the scientific
contribution reminds us that scientific literatures are social constructs that
have histories. This observation need not lead us to reject the scientific
project, nor should it cause us to become ontological relativists. However,
our epistemological evaluation of a synthetic narrative such as From the
Corn Laws to free trade needs to take the socially contingent nature of
scientific truth claims into account. This need becomes especially important
in the case of a multidisciplinary project that draws from the sequences of
discovery in three distinct fields. Her findings about Russell and Wellington.
for example, probably would not be recognized as a contribution in the
political science or economic literature on Repeal, since they approach this
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One Case to Rule Them All
285
contributions by exactly the same amount that larger members increase
theirs (see WaIT, 1983 for proof, which is robust against many changes in its
assumptions).
Fortunately, Schonhardt-Bailey moves beyond this economic concentra­
tion model to look at the geographic concentration of the textile industry
in Lancashire and the geographic deconcentration of export interests
across England. She maintains that geographic concentration of the textile
industry in Lancashire concentrated resources for the free trade campaign.
This concentration allegedly motivated this core of industrialists to bear
a disproportionate burden in supplying the public good. Unfortunately, this
part of Schonhardt-Bailey's claim cannot be sustained theoretically in light
of the post-Olson literature.
Her second geographic claim is more plausible. She shows empirically
that increasing the number of exporting industries, and the resulting
geographic deconcentration of export-oriented interests, enhanced the
political leverage of the League by broadening its support base. Because
geography rests on "imperfections" in the political market -. district
boundaries - this claim is not contradicted by the post-Olson literature on
collective action.
Schonhardt-Bailey's empirical findings - that this geographic deconcen­
tration is associated with growing influence of the free trade interest - would
make the underlying theoretic logic worth exploring in greater detail.
Unfortunately she does not do this, so it is hard to know what the
theoretical import of this finding should be. Is the Anti-Corn Law League
unusual in resting on an increasingly dispersed geographic base? Or is this
pattern typical of successful political movements? Without a theoretical
analysis that distinguishes geographic concentration from economic
concentration, it is impossible to know. Her core method, using a theoretical
synthesis to explain a unique event, cannot help us identify which parts
of her story are generalizable.
Putting these theoretical issues together, my own judgment is that
Schonhardt-Bailey has shown us that geographic deconcentration makes a
political coalition easier, at least in a first-past-the-post system (compare,
e.g., McGillivray, 2004; Pincus, 1975). Her claim that industrial concentra­
tion aided creation of the League is, in contrast, not consistent with theory
and thus ought to be counted as anomalous. Having an anomaly of this sort
is not a problem for a theoretical account, though it is a problem for a
theoretical synthesis of the sort that Schonhardt-Bailey offers us. To explore
this challenge further, the following section examines the epistemological
status of a theoretical synthesis built to explain a single "case."
iscourse question de novo, in much the way as my counterfactual historio-·
raphy discussed in the previous paragraph.
THEORETICAL CHOICES IN AN
EMPIRICAL PROJECT
'he contingent nature of scientific advance implies that we need to consider
arefully Schonhardt-Bailey's theoretical choices. From the Corn Laws to
'ee trade employs a largely empirical research strategy that draws
'om mUltiple theoretical sources. She avoids the trap that snares some
;holars in the field of historical political economy, who propose a group
f loosely connected hypotheses about tariffs, voting behavior, or some
ther topic of interest. These other studies derive these hypotheses in a seat­
f-the-pants manner that is uninformed by either historiography or non­
uantified analytical traditions. By using both the theoretical literature
nd the historiography, Schonhardt-Bailey comes up with much more useful
ypotheses, grounded in well-defined theoretical literatures, that are well
'orth testing.
Before discussing her theoretical synthesis, I will note one sin of omission
nd one sin of commission. In her study of the domestic politics of Repeal,
chonhardt-Bailey neglects all international dimensions of Britain's move
) free trade. This includes most notably the argument, found both among
farxists and Realists, concerning the effects of British hegemony in the
lternational system (see Pahre, 1999). This omission means that she does
ot address possible lines by which international variables might affect
ritish domestic politics, including most intriguingly the anticipated
!Tects on the United States (see James & Lake, 1989). Such interactions
etween the domestic politics of two states are ubiquitous in the field of
olitical economy (Pahre, 2005) and should have been rejected explicitly if
lat is Schonhardt-Bailey's position. Better still would have been to bring
Iternational factors into the domestic story, as I suggest later.
Schonhardt-Bailey's sins of commission concern her use of Mancur
Ilson's (1971) theory of collective action despite subsequent theoretical
ork undercutting its foundations. Following Olson, Schonhardt-Bailey
egins with the presumption that increasing concentration of an interest
roup will lead to more effective lobbying, as larger firms in a group
mtribute more. As it turns out, the claim that larger members contribute
lore is true, but the conclusion is false: smaller members decrease their
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GENERALIZATIONS AND SYNTHESIS
From the Corn Laws to free trade does not engage in classical hypothesis
testing. A classical test does not care whether any single observation is
inconsistent with a given hypothesis. Instead, a classical test would look
solely at whether the set of observations allows us to reject the null
hypothesis (and thus, indirectly, to support the hypothesis being tested).
Schonhardt-Bailey does not have the luxury of ignoring certain observa­
tions. To take one salient example, the behavior of the Anti-Corn Law
League needs to be consistent with her ultimate theory of interest group
behavior. If this particular pressure group were to exhibit anomalous
behavior, then her overall project were to fail, no matter how many other
pressure groups the theory might explain.
Though she cannot ignore certain facts, she can ignore theories at will.
Because the project is driven by the case of Repeal, Schonhardt-Bailey has
no flexibility in choosing observations but can choose from an indefinitely
large set of possible hypotheses and theories.
As a result, From the Corn Laws to free trade offers more of a research
lleuristic than a theory of political economy. Without presenting a general
theory, the book cannot claim to provide an explanation, at least in the
:lassical sense of a covering law explanation of an event. There is no general
!,aw "covering" these events, that is, there is no generalization for which
[he Repeal of the Corn Laws is but an observation. Schonhardt-Bailey's
theoretical synthesis does not try to generate claims that one could apply to
}ther instances of trade policy such as Germany's 1879 marriage of iron and
·ye. By implication, each event would require its own synthesis.
Though Schonhardt-Bailey does not describe it that way, this approach
.0 explaining history represents a kind of methodological project. Interests,
nstitutions, and ideas provide a guide to research. As a heuristic, the book
:ucceeds very well. Having identified the relevant interests, institutions, and
deas, she investigates exactly out how, when, and why they came to playa
)art in Repeal. The heuristic points naturally toward a synthetic account.
As generalizable theory, however, this synthesis is more problematic, in
)art because of its novelty. Like many others, Schonhardt-Bailey's approach
uns up against the Duhem-Quine thesis that theories are underdetermined
)y the evidence. Specifically, any particular observation or set of data would
,e consistent with an indefinitely large set of different theories. Evidence,
aken by itself, cannot help us distinguish among these rival theories since
.ny evidence is consistent with all of them.
One Case to Rule Them All
287
Constructivists see the Duhem-Quine thesis as leading us necessarily to
relativism - these theoretical constructs must be "equally true" and are
chosen only because of non-scientific criteria such as social status or political
power (see Knorr-Cetina & Mulkay, 1983). Such ontological relativism is
undesirable, since it undermines the entire scientific project by denying the
possibility of "true" statements. From a more pragmatic perspective, clearly
some theories are true enough to be useful. Pasteur's germ theory of disease
proved critically important for both pasteurization and inoculation, two
major public health benefits that would not have followed from most of the
other imaginable theories that were equally consistent with the evidence from
Pasteur's laboratory work.
How might one evaluate contending theories pragmatically? One might,
as Schonhardt-Bailey does, produce a theoretical synthesis consistent with
the evidence. Unfortunately, the Duheim-Quine thesis counsels considerable
caution against this strategy. Mter all, an indefinitely large set of theoretical
syntheses would be consistent with the evidence that she provides. In the
face of such theoretical multiplicity, we cannot really have any confidence
that this particular synthesis is better than any other theoretical synthesis.
Indeed, the absence of other theoretical syntheses of comparable scope and
empirical content means that we cannot even compare Schonhardt-Bailey's
theory to a rival theory. No matter how nuanced the analytical synthesis, no
matter how careful the empiricism - and Schonhardt-Bailey's synthesis is
both of these - it remains merely a single synthesis in a set of many other
equally plausible alternatives.
What, then, should we do? Setting aside the constructivists and relativists,
practicing social scientists with a concern for epistemology have tended to rely
heavily on Imre Lakatos' (1970) methodology of scientific research programs.
For our purposes, the key elements of this .methodology are Lakatos'
insistence on testing research programs against one another, evaluating
each research program against its own history, comparing the histories of
rival programs against one another, and looking at the ability of a research
program to predict "new facts," whatever that is.
I will have more to say about this comparative and historical elements of
these standards soon enough. Before tackling that, however, I wish to note
that Lakatos' program does not contain within itself an explanation of
its own success. Why had philosophers not proposed such an epistemology
before Lakatos? How can we explain its success - or, for that matter, its
success among social scientists, invisibility among physical scientists, and
controversial status among philosophers themselves?
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ROBERT PAHRE
Provisionally, I suggest taking an evolutionary approach to epistemology'
o answer these questions. Developing this approach fully would take us
ven more astray, but a quick sketch should make clear the kinds of
tandards to which we should hold a book such as From the Corn Laws
o free trade. Evolutionary epistemologies provide a form of naturalist
lhilosophy of science that seek a plausible explanation of how scientific
,eliefs might more closely approximate the reality that they seek to
mderstand (see Giere, 1985). Such epistemologies can in principle account
lot only for scientific progress but also the evolution of epistemologies
hemselves. According to evolutionary epistemology, processes of natural
election and evolutionary adaptation should help "better" scientific claims
vin out against weaker scientific claims in a marketplace of competition
~or review, see Campbell & Paller, 1989).
Multiple challenges present themselves in thinking about Schonhardt­
tailey's project in this way. Each of the theories from which she draws has
Llcceeded in a different habitat - some are found in historiography, some
[} economics, and others in political science. Each theory is presumably well
dapted to that environment. For example, endogenous tariff theory (ETT)
lrovides a successful research agenda in economics, well-suited to compete
,ith other data-intensive models of trade policy (for review, see Pabre, 2007,
hapter 2). These attributes make EIT only moderately successful in
,olitical science, where ideational accounts that neglect both formal theory
:ld large-n evidence can also compete. These same ideational accounts,
Ihen well supported by primary source documents, thrive in historiography,
abitats that would be deadly to almost all examples of EIT.
Schonhardt-Bailey offers us a hybrid species, the product of a kind of
ltellectual genetic engineering, with DNA from theories in each of these
iree disciplines. Her ideational claim, that politicians voted as delegates
,.hile claiming to be trustees, probably cannot thrive in the disciplinary ....
nvironment found in economics. There, by assumption, politicians vote
leir constituents' interests, and any justifications they offer are mere
bfuscations. The delegate-trustee puzzle is no puzzle here, so a solution to
lis puzzle does not contribute to economics. Analogous problems of "fit"
'in be found between Schonhardt-Bailey's theoretical synthesis and each of
er target disciplines.
Given the specific adaptations of any theory for its disciplinary
:1Vironment, it is far from obvious that a synthetic theory can succeed
'TOSS all three habitats. Unfortunately, we can only be sure that this hybrid
'lproves on the original genetic stock, that is, we can only say that it
Jvances scientific knowledge, if it succeeds in all three fields. If it were to
289
One Case to Rule Them All
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survive in two disciplines but not the third, then we can only claim that it
marks an advance by reference to a kind of scientific popularity contest, a
sort of appeal that philosophers of science find very unattractive (see, e.g.,
critiques of Kuhn, 1969).
For a multidisciplinary synthesis, any theoretical errors and omissions
become decisive. If the theoretical synthesis draws on a theory of
concentrated interests that economists rejected two decades ago, and if it
excludes international variables and the domestic representation of those
variables that other scholars have identified as important, then we cannot
say that Schonhardt-Bailey's synthesis represents an unambiguous advance
on the fields from which it draws. It certainly cannot claim to be a synthesis
of those variables that it excludes.
Contrast the situation we would see if Schonhardt-Bailey had chosen to
work within a given research program. In this counterfactual world, we could
certainly see a theory's advance on its predecessors within that program,
without needing to appeal to popularity contests. Moreover, the battle between
any two paradigms would, at least in principle, be amenable to resolution: her
advance could be compared to the successes or failures of a rival program.
For these reasons, for all its admitted strengths, From the Corn Laws to
free trade also illustrates some of the epistemological pitfalls of a
multidisciplinary theoretical synthesis. On the contrary, the book's methods
should travel well across disciplines. As discussed earlier, the ALCESTE
computer program has demonstrated advantages as a heuristic for
historians. Schonhardt-Bailey's analysis of political rhetoric also opens up
a good line of research that economic historians could explore more fully ­
this rhetoric, no less than material interests or political interests, helps
explain the endogenous choice of economic policy. From the Corn Laws to
free trade provides a methodological heuristic along with a rich and nuanced
narrative that any scholar interested in nineteenth-century Britain, regard­
less of discipline, will need to consider.
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REFERENCES
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Bates, R. R., Greif, A., Levi, M., Rosenthal, J.-L., & Weingast, B. (1998). Analytic narratives.
Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Blyth, M. (2003). Structures do not come with an instruction sheet: Interests, ideas, and
progress in political science. Perspectives on Politics, 1(4), 695-706.
Campbell, D. T., & Paller, B. T. (1989). Extending evolutionary epistemology to "justifying"
scientific beliefs. (A sociological rapprochement with a fallibilist perceptual
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ROBERT PAHRE
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Gordon '8 POSTMODERNISM AND
THE ENLIGHTENMENT
META-NARRATIVES,
ENLIGHTENMENT AND PARADOX
Willie Henderson
A review essay on Daniel Gordon's (Ed.) Postmodernism and the Enlightenment:
New Perspectives in Eighteenth Century French Intellectual History. London:
Routledge, 2001. 227 pp. ISBN 041592796X.
It was with a certain amount of surprise mixed in roughly equal proportions
with curiosity that I recently accepted the task of writing a review of a work,
published in 2001, on the encounter between the Enlightenment (meaning
the French Enlightenment) and postmodernism. Reading in the Scottish
Enlightenment suggests a need to know something about the wider
European context though the exclusivity of France as the Enlightenment
or as the home of Enlightenment is no longer a sustainable proposition. The
Scots, in their energetic Universities, were as much involved with applying
Newton and developing Locke or extending Shaftesbury or countermanding
Mandeville as they were with the continental philosophies. The proposition
put to me, to persuade me to the task, was the work was likely to contain
ideas that intellectual historians of economics might profit from. A reflection
on the significance of two potentially conflicting sets of ideas ought to have
significance for the study of 18th-century economics developed within the
cultural context of wider Enlightenment thought.
A Research Annual
Research in the History of Economic Thought and Methodology, Volume 27-A, 291-296
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